Why do the Japanese love Hawaii?

(CNN) — Hawaii is consistently one of the most popular holiday destinations for Japanese tourists. But they don’t show their love just by going there.

Food, clothing and festivals all over Japan show that people love the islands for more than just the beaches.

According to the 2022 Travel Trends report from Japan’s domestic travel agency HIS, Hawaii was the top overseas travel destination for summer vacations, accounting for 20% of people booking overseas summer trips through the agency.

Japan’s two largest airlines, ANA and Jail, started daily flights to Hawaii in July and June for the first time since the outbreak.

Japanese aviation and travel analyst Kotaro Torimi also said, “ANA and JAL know that it is the first place Japanese tourists return to when they travel abroad. It is a place where they can go freely without a visa.” “These airlines are really stepping up their Hawaii campaigns … all they’re doing is advertising for trips to Hawaii.”

Japan’s love affair with Hawaii can probably be summed up in one word: Iyashi. It means “healing” or “comfort” in English, but it also embodies the sense of freedom and relaxation that many Japanese associate with the islands.

Rise in popularity, rise in price

Although Japanese travelers’ love for Hawaii dates back decades, it will take some time for travel numbers to return to their pre-Covid-19 heights.

Before the outbreak, Japanese travelers made up the largest number of foreign tourists in Hawaii. According to data from the Hawaii Tourism Agency, Japanese tourists spent the most money per visitor.

In the year In the first half of 2022, travelers from Japan decreased by 95.2% to only 34,925 visitors compared to 734,235 in 2019. Hawaii

And there is another factor at play, which is the depreciation of the yen. The yen’s depreciation against the dollar has made it more expensive for Japanese to travel to the US. The majority of current flight bookings for Hawaii are for upper cabin classes such as business and premium economy.

“People who want to go now are mostly rich people or people with high salaries, because it’s normal for them. Now I think it’s impossible for young people to go to Hawaii by chance.” Added Torimi.

Experience Hawaii without leaving Japan

For those who can’t go to Hawaii, Japan offers local options.

Hawaiian-themed festivals — with hula dancers, ukulele players and Hawaiian food trucks — are very popular.

These festivals are held in metropolitan cities such as Tokyo, Yokohama, and Osaka, as well as rural areas such as Ikaho Onsen, a hot spring town in Gunma Prefecture.

“(These festivals) would bring this kind of Hawaiian culture to Japan and make people aware of the goodness of Hawaii.”

Aside from frequent festivals, there are Hawaiian restaurants all over Japan.

Punalu’u, a Hawaiian-themed restaurant in Yachio, Chiba, is decorated with both broadly American and Hawaiian-themed memorabilia. Next to the wall is a Harley Davidson motorcycle and a surfboard with the store’s name on it.

Owner and chef Yuji Nonaka, 57, left his salary job to start the restaurant 14 years ago with his wife Kiyomi Nonaka, 50.

Kiyomi discovered her love for Hawaii — especially hula dancing — on a business trip when she was 18.

“Hula has helped me overcome many things in my life, when things are not going well in my relationships with others or at work. I feel like I am on a higher level when I am doing Hula. Sharing this feeling with others, I opened my own Hula school 18 years ago,” she says.

Origins of communication

Eugene Yaguchi, a professor at the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Studies, focuses on Hawaii and US-Japan cultural relations.

Yaguchi notes that many Japanese immigrated to Hawaii in the early 19th century.

Many had relatives to visit, which helped with the language barrier.

According to the 2016-2020 American Community Survey data conducted by the US Census Bureau, 22.3% of Hawaii’s residents are Japanese or part-Japanese.

“I think people (in Hawaii) today speak Japanese for business purposes. If you can’t, it’s very easy to find people who can understand Japanese, and you have advertisements and signs and everything in Japanese,” explains Yaguchi. .

For nearly 20 years after the end of World War II, leisure travel abroad was banned in Japan, with the occasional exception of foreign programs or business trips.

“For two decades after the end of the war, leisure travel was not allowed. The war ended in 1945 and foreign travel was severely restricted until 1964, but after the travel ban was lifted, Hawaii was one of the most popular places for Japanese people to visit,” Yaguchi added.

Even if they couldn’t go, they dreamed of Hawaii.

Spa Resort Hawaiian is a hot spring theme park located in the Joban area of ​​Fukushima Prefecture, and was the epitome of Hawaii in the years following the ban.

As the coal industry declined in the 1960s, a local mining company turned to tourism to save jobs and stimulate the local economy, creating Japan’s first resort, including a heated swimming pool, palm trees and entertainment from Hawaii.

In the year The appreciation of the yen along with the Japanese economy in the 1980s allowed the Japanese to visit Hawaii at the height of the bubble economy in the 1990s.

“Hawaii kind of became a beach paradise in the 1990s and also a shopping paradise for the Japanese,” Yaguchi said. “Then there’s this kind of reimagining or reconceptualization of Hawaii, which is not a shopping paradise (but more) like an Iashi place.”

Peace on the plate

The plate lunch is a product of Hawaii’s multicultural background. Usually, two tablespoons of white rice, a side of macaroni salad with lots of mayonnaise and a protein of your choice, usually drizzled with a thick sweet sauce.

“When I went to Hawaii and saw the plate lunches, I found it really fascinating. It’s just a fusion of American, Japanese and Asian[cultures]. That was very interesting to me and made me addicted to plate lunches. There weren’t many plate lunch restaurants in Japan that were close to what I had in Hawaii,” he said. Akihiro Misono, from Sakura, Chiba Prefecture, started his plate lunch restaurant Da Plate Lunch 808 last year.

Honolulu-based radio station KSSK-FM broadcasts to the restaurant from Hawaii. Customers often sport “aloha shirts”, which are called Hawaiian shirts in America.

Eggs ‘n Things, a Hawaii-based breakfast cafe and restaurant chain, has its only overseas presence in Japan. The first opened in Harajuku in 2010.

Kota Matsuda, CEO of Eggs ‘n Things Japan, cited the brand’s popularity among Japanese travelers visiting Hawaii.

“Especially during this difficult time of Covid, the barriers for many people to travel overseas are still high, but for our customers who want to travel to Hawaii, we offer an experience that is close to that. People don’t come here just for the Hawaiian food, but for the unique ‘Hawaii vibe,'” Matsuda said.

wearing fandom

Yosuke “Yo-chan” Seki, an aloha shirt enthusiast and driver, surfs every weekend and never gets tired of returning to Hawaii – he’s been going every year since 2011.

“Ever since I started wearing aloha shirts, I’ve been wearing them most of the time in my everyday life,” the 47-year-old said. “I hope people see me wearing them and think they want to try wearing them. Right now, I’m wearing a copy of one of the expensive designs that cost up to several million. It’s me. It’s around 20,000 to 30,000 yen to wear.

Forty-year-old Asami Seki, also an aloha shirt lover, has a side business called 82 of aloha. A year ago, she started creating hypoallergenic accessories that people could wear while swimming.

“I’ve only been to Hawaii once, but during this time, even though I couldn’t go because of the pandemic, I’ve slowly come to love Hawaii more and more,” she said.

“I’ve always wanted to go to Hawaii and I’ve always admired it, even before my first visit. After returning from my first trip, I began to incorporate aspects of Hawaii into my lifestyle.”

Her husband, Yosuke, agrees, saying, “It’s kind of a situation for me.”

“I wear aloha shirts when I want to dress up, I feel well dressed when I wear them and it’s fun to choose the theme of the day and coordinate with others,” Asami added.

Shirts have a great influence on Japanese art and design.

Sun Surf, an aloha shirt brand under Toyo Enterprises, has been in the game for over 50 years, specializing in replicating aloha shirts from the 1930s-1950s. The brand’s director, Yoshihiro Nakano, 47, started collecting the shirts as a teenager as an aloha shirt researcher.

According to Nakano, the aloha shirt originated in Hawaii with Japanese immigrants.

“Even in Hawaii, they wore Japanese-style clothing. There were people who immigrated to Japan in the mid-1800s, and soon they started importing rolled fabrics, among them Japanese clothing. The locals saw that and thought it would be fun to use them to make shirts, aloha shirts with Japanese patterns. They started working,” Nakano said.

Mass market production started after that. Instead of importing roll fabric from Japan for Japanese clothing, stores in Hawaii imported a wide variety of printed fabric just for the aloha shirt.

Today these Aloha shirts are considered collectors items.

“There are a lot of (customers) who never wear (shirts) and just collect or model them,” Nakano said.

It’s all in the spirit of Iyashi.